Sean Middleditch wrote:
> One thing I'm basing most of this on is that the setup utility doesn't
> *need* to be smaller, because it should be installed on the user's
> system already.
I think that's an atrocious assumption though. I'd like my
applications to install now, not in five years' time when
obsolete distros have died -- and why should they package
yet another new installation system until there are a critical
mass of (hard-to-install-without-the-setup-utility-anyway, so
doomed to not be adopted) packages that need it? Additionally,
even the distros that actually offer it would probably make
it optional.
The escape route from the chicken-and-egg thingy is the magic
stub installer. That could be cool and fine, but
1) The setup utility it pulls should *still* be small because the
poor package that's first to use it has to bare the brunt of
ticking off the user with this extra surprise download.
2) It had better work!
I'm still... well... the computer scientist in me likes the
theory of the universal install-once stubbed package utility, but
the pragmatic package-maker in me wants a self-contained solution
that pretty much exactly fits Ryan's criteria of being basic and
small, and really really working when you run/click it.
--Adam
--
Adam D. Moss . ,,^^ adam at gimp.orghttp://www.foxbox.org/ co:3